Rage against the Mail machine: the genesis of Letters

Inspired by a call for an open source e-mail client geared towards power users …

After years of frustration and joking about making a $500 commercial e-mail client for Mac OS X, developer Brent Simmons sounded a call late last week to create an alternate to Apple's Mail as an open source project. That call has been resoundingly answered by a sizable group of independent Mac devs who have also longed for an e-mail client geared more towards the needs of power users. While the project is scarcely a week old, the app already has a name: Letters.

The history behind Letters goes back at least as far as the summer of 2007, when the iPhone made IMAP a better e-mail protocol than POP for many users. (IMAP keeps all your e-mail on the server, where it can be accessed from multiple machines. This is as opposed to POP, which transfers your e-mail to your local machine.) After switching to IMAP, Simmons switched to using Mail—included with Mac OS X—as his sole e-mail client. However, he quickly discovered a few limitations that made Mail less-than-ideal for the barrage of e-mail that many developers receive on a daily basis.

The main limitations of Mail that Simmons identified were lack of useful keyboard shortcuts for filing messages into suitable archives or specific mailboxes, as well as lack of a serious text editor with built-in macros. Still, the few other mail clients available for Mac OS X also have a number of shortcomings. Microsoft's Entourage uses a proprietary database to store messages, doesn't integrate well with other applications, and has a somewhat bloated feature set for some users' needs. Mozilla's Thunderbird lacks Mac OS X integration and native feel. Command-line programs, like mutt, certainly have some programmer-friendly features, but lack a GUI and OS integration.

"E-mail is, or ought to be, a keyboard thing—it's about reading and writing," Simmons wrote in 2007. "I'm not drawing anything or applying gradients or moving shapes around—I should be able to set the mouse aside."

Why $500? "$500 because the economics of something less expensive just won't work," Simmons told Ars. "Mail.app is a very good e-mail client, and it comes with your Mac." In other words, only the few people who know that $500 is nothing compared to what the app would be worth, in terms of improved productivity, would be willing to pay.

Despite a lot of interest in the idea, though, it went nowhere. It seemed the specter of Apple incorporating a new client's best features into Mail, or the chance that the addressable market was simply too small, kept Simmons and most others from trying.

Change is needed

"We kid a lot about it, but the Mac needs a great, alternative e-mail client, and in our coding fantasies we always talk about making the perfect one," Panic's Cabel Sasser told Ars. "What holds us back are only dumb, boring business things: it would take a lot of work, and we're not sure the return would be worth it."

Sasser explained that he felt that users would be willing to buy another e-mail client "without question," but that it needs to be special in order to generate a following and be considered successful. "And very special means lots of work and risk," he said. "For me, it's almost more about the 'What do you do that's different and better than Mail' challenge. And I like a challenge, but we're a little busy [with our other software] right now."

"The economics of it make it kind of tough, given that Apple ships a good email client with OS X," Simmons wrote. "Nevertheless, we need that [power user] e-mail client. The only way to get there is via open source; there might be enough interest and energy in the community to make it happen."

Simmons started an e-mail list and invited other developers to join. By Monday, the application had a name, a Twitter account, and by Wednesday had a project leader. The e-mail client will be called Letters, and project contributors voted Daring Fireball's John Gruber as the man to be responsible for getting version 1.0 out the door.

"I see this position not as doing the actual work of engineering or designing, but as making decisions," Gruber told Ars. "Like a movie director: doesn't write the script, doesn't appear as an actor, doesn't design the set or costumes, doesn't run the camera, doesn't edit the footage, doesn't write the musical score. But who decides the direction of all those things, and decides when all those things are good enough?"

Why switch?

"Mail is very good, yes, but it's not good enough for a certain type of email user," Simmons told Ars. "I'm constantly frustrated by big things and little things. I have to read and reply and process a lot of email, and Mail doesn't allow me to make it any easier and faster."

"A simple little thing: how come I have to use the mouse to move a message to another folder?" Simmons said. "Or, how come I can't define color-coding for keywords inside email? That would help tons with words like 'crash,' at least for developers. I could go on and on—mostly with small things—but they all add up."

But Mail isn't the only e-mail client that developers have problems with. "Get me off Entourage!" Iconfactory's Craig Hockenberry exclaimed. "That's not a flippant answer; I have 15 years of mail archives, but the data is in a proprietary format, making it hard to use another product. And, the UI is feeling clunky, but still less clunky than Mail. Every time I try Mail, I get frustrated," he told Ars.

What to expect

As far as what features Letters 1.0 would have, there's still a lot of work to be done before that list gets made. Simmons has drawn up a proposed general list, which would likely appeal to anyone that handles a large volume of e-mail (cough Ars writers cough), and not just developers:

Uses IMAP protocol

Has a native Cocoa UI

Includes generous keyboard shortcuts and control

Handles mailing lists without breaking a sweat

Has a plugin API for adding features

Has a documented data format for maximum compatibility

The project is still in the early stages, though. "I'd say the only decision that has been made is that it'll focus on IMAP," Gruber told Ars. "Next step: build and recruit a team."

That process has also already begun, as Gruber has tapped Gus Mueller to serve as the technical lead for Letters. "I'm hoping to get Letters started off on the right foot, with a very traditional Cocoa design," he told Ars.

"That means things like using the document architecture, using a framework for the IMAP/SMTP stuff, getting things like Grand Central Dispatch integrated right away," Mueller said. "I'm also hoping to make it really easy for new folks to jump on board, and get contributing right away."

But that hasn't stopped anyone from thinking about what their favorite feature would be.

"When I think about Letters, I think of combining Mail.app and mutt into one app that's better than both of them," Simmons told Ars. "I want to use the love-child of Mail and mutt."

Sasser would like better automated filing of messages after they have been replied to. "All I want is an 'After sending a reply, move message to XXXXX folder' preference," he said. "And better searching—to be able to easily combine search criteria."

Extensive support for plain text editing is a definite must for Mueller. "The one feature that's going to be there is real text editing," he told Ars. "None of this fancy editing in a WebKit view crap. Letters 1.0 will be able to view HTML emails for sure, but I'm uncertain about editing. We'll just have to see what someone comes up with."

Even Gruber has his own feature idea. "If you tend to get a slew of messages of a certain type—say, automated notices, or if you're a developer, crash reports—you could create an extension that is intended specifically for helping you deal with these messages," he told Ars.

(If you could name the number one feature you need in an e-mail client for Mac OS X, what would it be? Be sure to let us know in the comments!)

Ultimately, the focus of Letters 1.0 will be about getting work done as efficiently as possible. "We're going to try to build something that does less than Apple Mail, but what it does do, it will do better," Gruber said.